City State Entertainment has been posting daily updates to the Kickstarter, some of them are available to anybody, some are available only to backers. I'll try to summarize them there, with a link to the update.
Update 1
Update includes a video that has some introductions to key players at CSE, and a thank you.We just passed the $500,000 mark on our Kickstarter campaign! That is 25% of our funding goal in roughly 8 hours! You guys ROCK!
Update 2
The video in the update includes additional information on the text above.Good morning backers! This is our first morning update (Woot!) and in it Mark talks about what to expect later in the day from CSE:
1) Add-ons - We will have another update later in the day that will talk about our add-on program.
2) A video update from Andrew Meggs that we will release later in the day. That update will show off some of the early engine tech that he has been working on. It's a pretty neat little demo that is focused on building the foundation we need to build a great engine rather than just trying to put some pretty pictures on the screen and then saying "See! Bright! Shiny!" The demo was built entirely in C++ by Andrew over the course of less than a week and is not built upon some other rendering engine. He's off to a pretty good start. Keep your eyes on the screen to Andrew's left, lots of good things are happening there.
This video also has a thank you from Mark Jacobs.
That's it for today's morning update!
Update 3
There is more text in the update, but it is justification on why CSE is building their own engine for CU, rather than using an off the shelf solution. The video includes a tech-demo with 10,000 characters on screen at once.Good afternoon from Andrew! Today’s Kickstarter update is a demo of some graphics tech. And it’s pretty neat, but more importantly it’s necessary. I want to talk a little about why that is. There’s a lot of good engine tech out there, so why roll our own?
Update 4
.As the day turns to dusk and our Kickstarter continues to grow, it's time for a recap of today's events. First, we had our first Dragonwhale sightings. Those almost mythical beings whose appearance had been foretold for days have joined our Kickstarter. As with everyone who has pledged to support Camelot Unchained, they have our deepest gratitude.
Secondly, Andrew got to show off some of his "programming chops" today in Update #3 and we are thrilled by the response. The man can really code and I know that as the Kickstarter continues, you'll like his updates even as much as I do. His updates, like this Kickstarter, are just beginning and they will get even better
This was pretty much a "Thank You" update.
Update 5
This update includes Andrew talking about the in-game UI, which will be fully customizable, and based on HTML5. There is a more full update on the CU homepage at http://camelotunchained.com/en/making-a ... f-the-web/Well, today's update took a little long than it was supposed to but I think you'll find it well worth your time to watch the video, especially the part where Andrew starts showing off his intellectual and programming prowess again. From yours truly, the highlights are:
Ding Gratz on the 750K and our 2nd Dragonwhale sighting,
Update to 10K tier (it now includes choice of 1 of the 5k tiers). As per the video, our current inn/island owners retain their current positions in the queue no matter when the Dragonwhales landed.
Guild name reservation is coming soon to the Founder's exchange.
Later today we will be showing the first 3D model (rigged, animated, etc.) for the Tuatha Dé Danann. After Andrew's next fabulous piece (you should really, really watch the video), you'll find a surprise waiting for you.
And here's Andrew (cue Tonight Show music)...
Update 6
The update includes concept art and a video for the Tuatha De Danann faction (this would be equivalent to Hibernia in DAoC).Tonight’s update is a really good one. First, you will get to see some additional concept art for our Tuatha De Danann. After that, you get to see a video where you’ll meet another member of our team, lead artist Scott Trolan and see some of the early work done on the TDDs. After that we’ll show you one of these fellows in 3ds Max. For inquiring and curious minds, that model was made with about 12K triangles which is the limit that Andrew has set for in-game models in Camelot Unchained.
Update 7
This is a fun little update with a video for the hammer fighting demo that Andrew talks about above.Good morning from City State, and thanks to all the people who backed us overnight! Today’s update is a little different: It’s not Camelot Unchained, but it’s part of why we believe we can make the game. It’s a little project that I put together literally in a couple of weekends to play with here, and the architecture’s proven a lot of the tech plans we have for CU’s server side. We’ve got physics, user accounts, threading, concurrency, database integration, client-side prediction and lag compensation -- all working -- and best of all a great big hammer to hit other players with.
Update 8
This is another concept art/video update, this time for the Viking female (Midgard in DAoC).Tonight's update features a first look at a Viking female complete with concept art (from initial work to final) and her walk cycle. We hope you enjoy it!
Update 9
This update is a video of Mark talking about combat systems.Hello everybody! Here's part 1 of a two part "talking head" update on some of my thoughts for the combat system. Originally it was going to be a single update but I ran very long on the video. Frankly, at 16m and no shiny graphics, it would be best defined as a sleep aid. So, we cut it down to 8 minutes and Part 2 will be posted tomorrow, along with a look at next week's updates.
Update 10
Part 2 of Mark talking about combat systems.Good afternoon everyone! Time for part two of my “talking head” chat about my thoughts on combat in CU and I’ll also talk about what’s coming up this week. Additionally, here are some thoughts in regards to things that I’ve seen in the comment section here as well as around the web the past few days.
In terms of archers, I think that people need to understand how important archers/scouts are to so many people (including myself) and to Camelot Unchained. I just want to work on them a while before I commit to putting them in the game at launch. Frankly, I think we have the opportunity to do something really interesting with archers/scouts because that class will no longer be bound by having to succeed in a PvE-leveling track. I want to make archers/scouts awesomely fun to play but to do we should be willing to take some chances especially now and before Beta. Oh, and for those that think that only archers are being singled out for the whole “no tab-targeting” thing, I wouldn’t count on that. ☺ Again, my #1 priority is to experiment with different concepts and no matter what, to make them all awesomely fun to play.
Update 11
The update includes a Q&A with questions coming from the backers of the project.So, another good day here at CSE and with our Kickstarter. I’m truly sorry I’ve been a bit pre-occupied the last two days but I’m almost through the interview cycle. I hope that by tomorrow night, I will have talked/emailed with everybody who wants to talk to us (and then we can give their ducks back to them!) and I can focus on our Kickstarter again full-time. In the meantime, I’ve got three bits of info for you all.
1) Tomorrow afternoon we will have another video update from Andrew. As you know he is building the engine that we will need for Camelot Unchained. He has continued to work on it and his next, but not final update, will show you something almost everybody has asked us for since this first tech update. The update is pretty sweet but focused not on the pretty but on the speed and scalability of the engine.
2) I’ve included a grab bag of goodness based on questions that I have been asked a lot in comments and via email.
3) I’ve got my Aloha shirt all ready to go for tomorrow! ☺
Update 12
Video has Mark summarizing the updates that will come throughout the day.Time for a three-part evening update. Part one is more "talking head" stuff from me, a lead-in to Andrew's two-part engine demo and of course, the Aloha shirt.
Last night really was a special moment for all of us. Thanks to the support from all of you, our Kickstarter passed the $1M threshold and our journey is now more than 50% complete. While we still have a long way to go, we are off to a good start.
Update 13
Update includes a video of the two sides that have been shown in concept art, beating the piss out of eachother. It tops out at 500 characters on screen, on a laptop, and maintains 60 frames per second. Not bad for the tech being all of a week old and nowhere near a finished state.Hi everyone! Andrew here.
In my first update last week, I showed off some of the rendering tech we want to use for Camelot Unchained, and talked about why we need to build a renderer and certain other components ourselves: Off the shelf, there's nothing that scales up to the epic battles we want to create.
Then, our art team showed off two of the races we're planning to put in the game: The Tuatha Dé Danann and the Vikings. There's some great concept art in those updates, as well as high-quality models for in-game.
Obviously, the next step is to put them together -- so we did! There are some further refinements and optimizations to the engine, and plenty more to be done, but I'll let the video speak for itself.
The next step for this, in terms of showing off what we want to do, is to hook this up to the networking layer of "CSE SmackHammer" from last week. We're working hard on this and a whole lot more, but for now, enjoy the show!
Update 14
Updated video with 1000 characters on screen. Some notes from Andrew about technology.Good afternoon from Andrew! Thanks to all of you for checking out the video last night. Here’s a small update, showing the same engine demo but with 1000 characters instead of 500. Epic indeed!
Update 15
This is just a teaser update.This is going to be a quick update. It was a busy day again and though there is not a lot to report I'm glad to see that Andrew's morning and yesterday evening's update were so well-received by our backers. Next step, spell effects and improved terrain. Coming soon (not this week) to a YouTube video near you!
Update 16
Two videos in this update, one is a thank you, the other is talking about Stretch goals.First, sorry for the delay in releasing this update. Unfortunately our video guy (who is also our lead artist & lead animator) had his back go out on him last night. He’s pushing through it but it has taken longer to get some things done today (amazing how pain does that to you). So, let’s give a big shout out to Scott and Michelle who over the last week have really made a herculean effort to bring these updates to you despite “stay at home” illnesses/injuries. Today's updates are presented in two parts. The first part is the basic intro and a shout out to our backers and an acknowledgement of two packages we received this week. Sorry I had to break up the video into two parts but I talk a bit too much about the stretch goals, especially the second one. I wonder why?
Update 17
Update includes another grab bag of questions from backers, and some notes about the latest engine build.I hope everyone is having a good weekend! Ours got off to a fine start with a Live Stream of our latest build of SmackHammer. For those who haven’t seen it before, SmackHammer is just a fun little tech demo masquerading as a game. It was originally intended to display some early server and networking code but because of the reaction of our backers, we’ve made it more like a game. This week we added day/night cycles, sun, moon, stars, capture the duck gameplay, scoreboard and ducks, more and more ducks. This morning I asked the team to put in our TDD model just to see how it would look and play in SH. This is, of course, not the gameplay that will be part of CU but simply a fun way to test some code before it is integrated into our main engine (Andrew’s demos). Besides, it’s just fun to shoot plastic yellow ducks at other members of our studio and run around with a big yellow duck on your head.
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I'll pick up from UPdate 18 in another post.